The Smell of Blood Was Everywhere

We all know that many men and women have been the victims of the excesses of the first decade of the life of the Islamic republic in the 1980s. They learned of the regime and its nature through the horrendous and frightful excesses and transgressions of people like Evin Prison’s butcher Lajevardi and “brother Hamid.”  And despite the passage of two decades, these victims continue to suffer from the pain that was inflicted on them and their soul then. This pain manifests itself and even explodes with the slightest trigger. It oozes out pain and suffering, and in some cases throws itself on the walls of Ward 350 of Evin Prison today. This is the place where torture, beatings and violence of all forms rules. The perpetrators of this violence are the “brothers” and pseudo religious men who have not been quenched even after their thirty plus years of blood sucking.

We as the mothers and fathers of today’s prisoners continue to see people from our generation whose souls have been injured and some still live in the dark prison cells. They sit in those cells and fear at all times that they would be inflicted still more pain. We see our kind in prisons, but we have had to have experienced this ourselves to really understand what they have done to us, what they are doing right now in Ward 350 of Evin Prison.

But despite these acts to silence and dissuade us, our kind is growing and our humanistic dreams are as strong as ever. If in our days these victims were leaders who supported workers (such as Rahman Hatefi), today they are workers who laugh at the torturers (Sattar Beheshti). If they were clerics who spent a lifetime behind bars (such as ayatollah Montazeri), today they are religious men who engage in freedom prayers (Mohsen Mirdamadi). If they were nationalists who loved and were vehemently attached to their country (Ezatollah Sahabi) today they are strong enough to defy their torturers by asking to be tortured even more (Emab Bahavar)!

But the group that faces us is made up of the same liars who yesterday signed execution orders at the blink of the eye and instantly raised the gallows. And even when they shed crocodile tears because of expediency, they still created groups and institutions like Kahrizak Prison or drove over human bodies in the streets. These are power thirsty men who appoint Mostafa Poor-Mohammadi to head the judiciary (the judge who ordered the serial executions of 1988).

On one side of this battle for life and death stand men who do not retreat from their demands for human rights even when they are under violent torture. Their message today is “You are mistaken if you think we will let you destroy our beloved ones” at every opportunity. These men who on the very day that mothers fell on the floor after seeing their tortured and injured sons, shaved their head in protest, stared at the eyes of intelligence agents, were thrown down and yet stood up to show that they no longer feared the agents even if the visiting room of the prisoners was a reminder of the conditions in Abu Ghraib prison.

On the other side stand Mr. Khamenei’s allies who are shrinking in size. Those who have replaced men like Lajevardi at Evin and who used to play soccer in open fields, nowadays have to drive in bulletproof vehicles, who cannot trust anybody next to them and each of whom acts as a microphone for his comrade in arms. These men know too well that when the Islamic republic is gone, their turn to face the public will come and they will face their fate.

We know of men and women whose voices have been silenced in the solitary prison cells, whose lives have been stolen from them, whose name, house and towns have been taken from them. But they could not and cannot take their dreams and hope from them. This hope is alive and across every inch of this countryside.

Today Emad Bahavar, Hassan Asadi Zeydabadi, Abdolfattah Soltani, Hossein Rownaghi Maleki, Akbar Amini, Yashardar alShava, Saeed Haeri, Sadegh Kaboodvand, Behzad Arab Gol, Saeed Matinpoor, Ghorban Behzadiannejad, Akbar Amini Armaki, Amin Chalaki, Siamak Ghaderi, Mohammad-Sadegh Rabani Amlashi, Alireza Rajai, Reza Shahabi, Mohsen Mirdamadi, Mohammad Shojai, Gholmareza Khosravi, Soroosh Sabet, Soheyl Babadi, Mohammad Davari, Mehrdad Ahankhah, etc. These are the buds of the seeds that will grow. These are the men who bleed with every beating and yet remind us that in the not too distant future a different time will come.

We shall rise; we shall plant trees in our wounds and we shall strengthen and grow despite and through our pain. We are here and we will stay.

To those in  Ward 350 of Evin  Prison I say, Our hearts are with you; we share your pain and shed tears. But this too, these bitter and dark days too shall pass.